The Pit Bull dog is a very interesting breed of dog that is often-times misunderstood and feared for the wrong reasons. Yet there are thousands of very proud Pit Bull owners all over the United States, as well as the rest of the world, that has a deep appreciation for this particular dog breed that many people overlook due to in adequate education of the breed itself.

First we may wonder where the Pit Bull came from. What was the blood line that led up to this incredibly strong, yet loving dog? What country did the Pit Bull stem from? What was it bred for? Let us start with the answers you would get if you were to ask the Pit Bull historian experts where this dog breed originated from.

Although it was in the United States that the Pit Bull Terrier took on its status and character, this breed of dog is not purely of American origin. In fact, most historians and researchers of this amazing dog breed tend to lean more towards the opinion that the American Pit Bull Terrier is the "American version" of the game bred Stafford or the Staffordshire Bull Terrier of the United Kingdom.

Of course the source of the Pit Bull is still debated to this very day, but most of the Pit Bull enthusiasts who tend to agree with the above notion maintain that the English and the Irish immigrants carried their beloved game bred Staffords to the United States. In time the gene pool of the original Staffordshire Bull Terriers became more distant to the Pit Bulls we see today, with specific changes in size as a major factor.

At this point you may be asking yourself: "Isn't the modern day Pit Bull a current expression of the original English Bulldog?" Interestingly enough, there is a second opinion about the true origin of the modern day Pit Bull. Other Pit Bull enthusiasts disagree that the family tree of this dog breed stems from the Irish and the English game bred Staffords. Instead, they believe firmly that the dog is a mere extension of the original English Bulldog.

This second group of people speculates that the Pit Bull actually has no terrier blood in the gene pool at all, as opposed to the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed, known of bull/terrier ancestry. In fact these Pit Bull fans are very strong-willed in their opinion that the dog is a continuation of the pure Bulldog of "Elizabethan days". For those of you who would like to dig deeper into this subject then you can find some very useful information from the writing of an American historian of the Pit Bull breed by Richard Stratton.